Reframe Family Pictures

Almost all us have moments in our past when we felt loved and supported. Remembering those good times facilitates healing and bolsters our belief in our own loveability.

However, if we are suffering of guilt over how we have been parenting our children, it is especially important that we accentuate our functional behavior in order to build on it. In learning to lovingly re-parent ourselves, it is a good idea to look at the family album we carry inside our heads.

Some of the snapshots will evoke happy memories and warm fuzzy feelings while others may seem more like potshots aimed hurtfully at us. A great many of our internal images were developed when we were young and had child's less-than-powerful perspective. As adults, we now have the authority to reframe painful memories much the same way we might change the frames of pictures displayed on the piano.

Give yourself some time to mentally browse through the photos you have accumulated from your past. Choose one or two that seem to call attention. Very gently become the child you see there. Even more gently ask what the child wants and needs from you.

Are you willing to fulfill the wish? If you feel loving and protective of the child, allow your adult self to comfort in the ways the child requests. But, if you do not feel good toward the child, you can bring into your mind's eye a protector who does feel love for the child. Allow this individual to care for the child.

With the help of either your adult self or the protector you call in to assist, redevelop the uncomfortable snapshot into a picture in which the child is safe and happy. Sense the feeling of that life from that viewpoint. Then absorb and claim those feelings as rightfully yours. Now, put your new memory in a picture, in a beautiful, valuable frame and display it in a prominent place.

There will be times in your life you find yourself reverting to the distressful feelings of the original picture. Move your thoughts to the new one, stay there, concentrate and remind yourself that as as an empowered adult, you can reframe your child's painful experience. We get so used to seeing these framed pictures that we eventually just accept them as reality. But if we remember they’re really framed pictures, we understand that we can reframe them any time we choose and in so doing open up a whole new way of seeing the world. We suddenly see something we’ve been looking at forever in an entirely new light.

Accentuating the functional encourages us to trust ourselves. It give us a surplus of strength we can draw on for support when we need to look at dysfunctions in our life. It aids healing process and bolsters faith for the best.

Prayer:

Lord, heal my aching heart
Give rest to my spinning mind
Keep peace in my difficult soul
Ease my pain and bind my wound
Amen.